Hospitals Streamline Cardiovascular Care With Hemo Solution

March 25, 2010 – Recognizing that a single database cardiovascular information system(CVIS) can streamline workflow and improve staff efficiency in the cardiology department, several hospitals are replacing their legacy hemodynamic systems with a unified CVIS. Through combining hemodynamic monitoring, ECG management, and multimodality imaging and reporting in a single database, McKesson’s Horizon Cardiology CVIS enables cardiologists to address today’s challenges of decreasing revenues, increasing costs and mounting documentation requirements.

The need for workflow efficiencies in an integrated cath lab environment has led healthcare organizations to replace their outdated systems with McKesson’s hemodynamic solution, including Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo, Miss. and Carroll Hospital Center in Westminster, Md.

“Our physicians and support staff were spending time manually re-entering important patient information into a series of disparate systems to complete procedural reports,” said Sharon Sanders, director of cardiopulmonary and outpatient services, Carroll Hospital Center. “Now with McKesson’s single database, a complete cardiovascular patient record is automatically updated with data and images at the point of treatment. Horizon Cardiology has replaced our multiple systems with a single unique platform that allows us to focus less on documentation and more on patient care.”

The Washington Hospital in Washington, Pa., also has experienced success with the hemodynamic solution and the newly released Horizon Cardiology Charge Manager module. Since installation, this Web-based module is enabling the cardiovascular staff to greatly streamline the labor-intensive, paper-based cath lab charge reporting process.

“As a result, we’re reallocating staff in ways that directly improve patient care and the bottom line,” said John Wilson, M.D., medical director, cardiology services at The Washington Hospital. “Clearly, McKesson understands our needs and has delivered a unique, comprehensive CVIS solution that has positively affected our patient care and long-term business success.”

Hemodynamic data shown on screens from the Merge Hemo recording system. It is among the newer generation hemodynamic systems for cath labs that are more user friendly and have technologies to speed workflow.